On this day in 1980 John Favara was shoved into the back of a van in New Hyde Park, never to be seen again. Favara was one of John Gotti’s neighbors, and the guy who knocked a 12-year-old Frank Gotti off his minibike, killing him.Witness accounts to the abduction ranged from him being beaten with a baseball bat, shot with a silenced .22 caliber pistol, or both.

One account says that while alive he was dismembered with a chainsaw and stuffed into a barrel filled with concrete and dumped in the ocean or buried on the chop shop lot somewhere.

His body has never been found.

On this day in 1980, John Favara stepped out into the summer air of New Hyde Park, Queens, and vanished from the face of the earth. The 51-year-old furniture salesman had made the fatal mistake of crossing paths — quite literally — with one of the most feared men in New York City. Just four months earlier, in March 1980, Favara had been driving along a street in the Howard Beach neighbourhood when 12-year-old Frank Gotti darted out on his minibike from behind a dumpster. The boy was struck and killed. The death was ruled an accident, but that determination counted for very little in the eyes of Frank's father, John Gotti, the rising Gambino crime family capo who would later become the most notorious mob boss in America.

What followed in the weeks before Favara's disappearance painted a grim picture of what was coming. Victoria Gotti, Frank's mother and John's wife, allegedly attacked Favara with a baseball bat in the street. Threatening notes were left on his car. Neighbours reportedly urged Favara to move away immediately. He had reportedly applied to do so, but the wheels of bureaucracy moved slower than the Gambino family's patience allowed. On 28th July 1980, Favara was seized outside his workplace and bundled into the back of a van. He was never seen again.

Witness accounts of that day varied in their grim particulars. Some recalled seeing Favara beaten with a baseball bat before being forced into the vehicle. Others spoke of a silenced .22 calibre pistol being used. In all likelihood, the truth involved elements of both. What followed his abduction has been the subject of equally disturbing speculation. One account, later relayed through law enforcement and mob informants, suggested that Favara was dismembered with a chainsaw while still alive and his remains stuffed into a barrel of concrete, which was then either dumped into the ocean or buried somewhere on a chop shop lot. His body has never been recovered, and no charges were ever formally brought in connection with his disappearance.

John Gotti and his wife were conveniently on holiday in Florida at the time, providing a degree of plausible deniability that the slick operator had clearly planned for. The FBI investigated but could build no prosecutable case. The Favara affair stands as one of the starkest illustrations of the savage code that governed life in the orbit of the Gambino family, a chilling reminder that in Gotti's world, accidents carried a price that no court of law could protect you from.